Slashdot Mirror
Protecting the Apollo Landing Sites From Later Landings
R3d M3rcury writes "The Lunar X-Prize is a contest offering $20 million to the first private organization to land and maneuver a robotic rover on the moon. There is also a $1 million bonus to anyone who can get a picture of a man-made object on the moon. But one archeologist believes that 'The sites of early lunar landings are of unparalleled significance in the history of humanity, and extraordinary caution should be taken to protect them.' He's concerned that we may end up with rover tracks destroying historic artifacts, such as Neil Armstrong's first bootprint, or that a mistake could send a rocket slamming into a landing site. He calls on the organizers to ban any contestant from landing within 100KM of a prior moon landing site. Now he seems to think this just means Apollo. What about the Luna and Surveyor landers? What about the Lunokhod rovers? Are they fair game?"
We have a picture of it right? Seriously what if every time somebody did something new that spot was forbidden to be stepped on again? asinine. What if nobody as allowed to visit the beach of Columbus's first landing sites? BFD, send a plaque or something and stop wasting your time worrying about whether a footprint is going to disappear someday. It will.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Heating and cooling once a month would expand and contract the soil, obliterating footprints eventually.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
How many places would remain if all those spots are banned? There are only so much good landing sites on the Moon.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Erosion has probably already destroyed the first footsteps on the Moon.
it will darn near be just as special as the first time. it's been SO long since we've been there, in person.
the next footprint should be just as protected.
These sort of contests work wonders towards inspiring new ideas and breaking away from old paradigms. In a free(ish) economy the main motivation is money. If you set out a prize for various pinnacles of innovation, then it is just a matter of time before they will be captured. If the goal is not achieved, then set the bounty higher. I love this idea for one and wish any attempts to gain the prize well! Break free from NASA's model, but don't step on the lunar dirt prints!
There is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun. No one visits it anymore, but it is a national landmark and can't be torn down to make way for newer high rises. It just gets older and more dilapidated as time goes by. It hasn't been visited since I was a poor boy.
So how many people actually went by to see that footprint or flag in the past year? Decade? 2 decades? 3 decades?
And keeping people away from the original "landing site" will keep them from figuring out that the first moon landing was faked by the government. (Or was it faked by our evil reptilian overlords? I can never keep that straight.)
I remember reading long ago, forget where, that official CCP policy was that if they were to arrive on the moon before the US returned, their first goal was to remove as much evidence of American landing sites as possible so as to claim the US had lied and in fact China was the first on the moon.
Probably some wharrgarbl from the intertubes stuck in my head, but who knows.
Great, now we'll need to deal with the lunar version of NIMBYs. I was personally looking forward to Hydrogen 3 and titanium surface mining on the Moon. I want vast robotic factories on the Moon so we can start mass producing segments for cylinder-type space colonies. I want to be able to retire in one of those space colonies.
It is a shame that some people exist merely to hold the rest of us back from our ideal Star Trek future with green alien babes.
I can't imagine the bootprint lasting long if North Korea make it up there.
You think those were nuclear missiles they were firing? North Korea are planning the worlds first single stage rocket 'landing' on the moon, with their great leader strapped to the front because he is so awesome he can actually reduce drag.
Task Mangler
"The sites of early lunar landings are of unparalleled significance in the history of humanity, and extraordinary caution should be taken to PREVENT EVER BEING ABLE TO PROVE THEY EVEN EXIST"
This is ridiculous idolatry. It's not like there is something we *don't* know about these events, there is nothing to discover there, and hence nothing to protect, as opposed to an archeological site.
The first bootprint was likely obliterated by the lunar ascent engine exhaust on the way out. Hello!
Why not? I personally think that preserving the artifacts of the first moon landing should be considered important.
Though realistically.... Neil Armstrong's first boot print was most likely obliterated when the LEM blasted off.
There's a lot of moon up there. I see no reason to disturb the existing landing sites until we have the means to preserve them properly.
So, do you feel the same about Bletchley Park? It's not a simple question. There ARE things we sometimes like to see preserved for the awe inspiring value they have for posterity. I don't know about all the sites on the moon but I'd vote for the first landing site of anything ever (Russian?) and the spot where a human being first walked.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
whether a footprint is going to disappear someday. It will
If it hasn't been already destroyed. Wasn't the photo of where he first stepped on the moon next to the lander? Wouldn't the lander module have toasted the ground around it when it fired it's engines up to re-enter lunar orbit?
Of course, what is the point of preserving a site that nobody can really go to anyway? Sure, if someone went there, they could 'ruin' the artifacts that remain, but who cares? It's not like anyone can visit the site and appreciate it. The best you could hope for would be to preserve it for future generations' camera equipped robotic lunar rovers.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
...where it's illegal to build within 100km of historical landmarks.
Oh, wait.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
It's just a matter of time until some chunk of space rock comes along and obliterates the whole landing site, bootprints, flags, rovers and all. Where do they think all the craters on the moon come from?
In that many years it will either be remembered and documented (and thus no need for a "special" preservation or it will be forgotten and that special preservation is useless.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Between now and the 2012 deadline we're likely to hear more and more of the developments and adventures or the various GLXP teams.
http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/teams
A more appropriate question is of all the GLXP teams, how many will actually get to the point of getting off the ground and doing a successful Trans Lunar Injection, and of that number, how many are actually going to attempt to meet the "imaging man made artefacts" criteria.
Official GLXP team; White Label Space has recently written of it's Lunar landing intentions and the focus seems to be more on finding water (another bonus) than finding Apollo, Lunokhod, Surveyor et al. They're considering the peaks of eternal light near the Moon's south pole which would also provide nearby landing sites with rover routes into the permanently shadowed zones.
http://www.whitelabelspace.com/2009/05/preliminary-landing-site-considerations.html
I hope that I'm not the only one that is fed up with this modern approach to trying to preserve everything we ever do. Why can't we be happy with the knowledge that we did it? If I got a chance to see the first boot print on the moon I'd jump at it but would my life be any worse if that boot print accidentally got driven over, hardly. I'm not advocating that we should go out of our way to erase history just let it take care of itself.
I'd bet that 99.999% of the population probably didn't even realize that there was a first boot print still up there and now they will get all up in arms because it might at some point in the future get erased. Sigh. Give me a solution to world hunger, fusion power and a decent internet connection first and then I'll care.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
After all we explore wrecks on the ocean floors, the landers should be afforded the same status for scientific investigation.
As it is, We've still got Neil's boot, so we can make more footprints anytime.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Don't assume this civilization will last forever. Suppose that we end up in a nuclear war, lose all our electronically stored information through global power outages, hundreds of years go by, our textbooks crumble, and all that is left are crumbling stone memorials in a dead language, oh and one DVD of Futurama.
We're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon!
Nothing wrong here, just environmentalists doing their thing. They also think we should stop exploring Mars, as we might disturb the environment there, too. They view space exploration as nothing more than a virus looking for new hosts to infect.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The no-build distance from historical landmarks is lesser on Earth because of the lack of free space here.
There is just less of it on Earth to go around, so we have to work with what we have.
On the Moon, it being bigger than the Earth, there is a shitload more free space to go around and it is only logical to have more of it protected.
I mean come on... What's a couple of hundred kilometers on the Moon? That fucker is huge! Bigger than the Sun, only it is really far away so it seems small.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
OK a photo was taken of the first footprint. I am guessing they walked all over it during the mission.
It was inconveniently placed at the bottom of the step ladder.
It is unlikely to have survived the first few minutes, let alone the blastoff
G
Actually, I think that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would be _thrilled_ if it became a popular picnic spot, with kids climbing over it and tourists pinching moon rocks. Because that would mean that humans have in fact settled there and made it a fact of life, rather than the expensive military publicity stunt their original visit was.
I think they'd settle happily for making the square kilometor a Lunar equivalent of a national monument, and having the tourist booth with the commemorative flags and the funny hats and the "authentic" souvenirs just outside it, though.
This issue draws attention to the danger of encouraging for-profit space travel. If in 50 years' time you find yourself looking up at the moon and seeing a Microsoft logo on it, don't say I didn't warn you.
Don't forget Bing Gordyn, the 8th man on the moon. And the first one with a mustache, so basically the first man on the moon (with mustache). On the moon. Moon! Moon! Moon!
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
The Eagle's descent stage is still in place. This is a fairly substantial piece of kit with lots of angular edges that could do a lot of damage to a descending experimental lunar vehicle.
I wouldn't want to go anywhere near that thing.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Sure those sites are important, but trying to ban anyone from ever landing within 100km of the site is absurd.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
You cannot protect something that does not exists, remember it was all setup in a studio ! America and Truth does not mix.
BONUSES: An additional $5 million in bonus prizes can be won by successfully completing additional mission tasks such as roving longer distances (> 5,000 meters), imaging man made artifacts (e.g. Apollo hardware), discovering water ice, and/or surviving through a frigid lunar night (approximately 14.5 Earth days). The competing lunar spacecraft will be equipped with high-definition video and still cameras, and will send images and data to Earth, which the public will be able to view on the Google Lunar X PRIZE website.
1. have multiple mini rovers that move 1km 2. take a call phone up and use it to send a cell call to earth as well a post on twitter for even more bonus prizes (or take up an earth fossil) 3. take a watter bottle up 4. completely shutdown at night or have a nuclear reactor to generate heat Only HD not SHD (like the manned missions)? Does anybody on Slashdot want to create our own team?
... as long as there are people living without access to electricity of telephone.
Or cars, while people without legs are forced to use wheelchairs.
Or refined sugar and flour because you waste energy and pollute the environment just so richer people could have better tasting but less healthy food.
Heck... having two perfectly working kidneys is immoral as long as there is at least one person in the world strapped to a dialysis machine somewhere.
Blood is immoral too... people bleed to death constantly. CON-STAN-TLY!!! Like, right now!
Breathing? Fucking hell yeah it is immoral! And rude to all those people that drowned on the Titanic. When you breathe - you embellish their memory and all that they have ever achieved.
Existing? Well, naturally! By your very existence you are preventing other humans to take up that space. Immoral as a 3-tit whore!
And let us not even start with smaller creatures, like cats. Have you any idea how many cats could exist in the space you presently occupy? A lot!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Oops. Don't go there. Nothing to see, honest.
Also: Without atmosphere, no turbulence. Additional protection.
True, but you also have weaker gravity, which will allow pressure from a rocket motor to have a greater effect than on earth. Also, debris will fly farther.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Hey all,
We've already visited one former Surveyor site: Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad visited the Surveyor 3 spacecraft in November of 1969 -- check out the stereo picture:
http://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/NVA2~4~4~4237~104763:Apollo---Surveyor-Stereo-View
It's kind of the same as graffiti artists (vandals) spray painting their names all over the Grand Canyon.
...Since we aren't debating allowing people to literally 'tag up' the moon landing site, can I presume that by 'preserve' you agree with the article that people should be kept away from the sites?
I agree with your logic, we should also 'preserve' the Grand Canyon by prohibiting people from going within 100km of it.
(BTW, if I ever land on the moon, I will now have to violently suppress the urge to tag up the lander.)
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I think it's enough to preserve the Apollo 11 landing site. That was after all where the human race first walked on the lunar surface.
The other sites are after all not that valuable, instead they should be cleaned up from all the trash the astronauts/tourists left behind ;)
... Salvage 1 ? That stuff's gotta be worth something. What's a few years of R&D, a few tons of fuel and some venture capital by comparison?
When the Apollo 11 LEM took off from the surface of the moon, the blast would have obliterated any footprints in the area, In fact the US flag was knocked over flat according to the astronauts.
Bill Gates has the right idea of what to do when you have too much money. He is doing so much good right now.
He is indeed and when you have money you too can give it away. Me? I give to charity but I also want the human race to expand outwards.
I've also been bothered by the amount of poverty in the world. We as First world nations do give massive amounts of charity to other nations and provide safety nets for our own people. However, unless your stance is that all the third world nations are made up of children who need to listen to us; you cannot dump all responsibility on the people already giving charity. At which point are the people on the receiving end held accountable for refusing efficient GM crops, committing inter-tribal murders and revenge killings, printing money and causing rapid inflation, piracy and banditry, etc?
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a charity collector outside the local University. They contended that many Aboriginal communities in Australia didn't have clean water or proper electrical connections, I asked why not, since it's been over a century since westerners set up shop. She told me they didn't want any. I asked how she was proposing to get everything set up if these people didn't want what she was offering. She told me they would petition local leaders.
Cue fat nerds who have never experienced hardship explaining why the poor should die and why this is actually more important than saving human lives back on earth.
Of course, it's also possible you're simply a better person than the rest of us and wise enough to see the truth. However since you're posting anonymously and won't stand behind your words, I'm doubting it.
How do you kill that which has no life?
As has already been mentioned, the very first footprint has likely been damaged/destroyed already since it was (obviously) positioned right in the path Neil and Buzz would have to traverse to get into and out of the LEM.
Furthermore, people are talking about a photo of the first footprint, but I'm guessing they are thinking of the famous photo that Buzz took of his own boot impression (as part of analyzing the soil characteristics):
http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/AS11-40-5877HR.jpg
http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/AS11-40-5878HR.jpg
This was taken quite some time after Neil first stepped onto the lunar surface.
The first footprint might be hiding somewhere in thid photo that Neil took of Buzz coming down the ladder:
http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/AS11-40-5869HR.jpg
Not so easy to tell which one it would be though, and it's in shadow...
"Give me six lines of C++ code written by the most competent programmer, and I will find enough in there to hang him."
So that's what happened to the Anasazi. Now, somebody just needs to go clean up the mess they left.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
We haven't even finished screwing up our own planet and already people are establishing "no-go-areas" on a moon. That's ludicrous ... clearly in breach of federation law ... oh wait, you're not supposed to know that just yet.
\|||/
(o o)
----ooO-(_)-Ooo--------
Kilroy was here!
Traveling to the moon needs to be routine before we can really "know" the place. Our pride of a footprint is holding us back from progress? Get real or never get a trip to the moon again, that seems the question.
Its sad that my first thought was this: the very first private venture to the moon will probably sell the Apollo and unmanned probes as the ultimate collectible artifacts to the highest bidder - and there is nothing that can be done about it. of course, I then started thinking more about the logistics as lifting a landing module off the moon and retuning safely and realized it was not going to happen yet, or any time soon. but the point remains that they could and there is nothing that can be done to stop them.
Thats one of the best funnies I've read for months on here. Thanks for cheering me up this morning :)
Dont destroy the footprint intentionally (if it still exists that is)... but dont make a big deal to preserve it either... let time do its thing...
As far as the footprint, flag, etc, are concerned, they were blasted pretty thoroughly when the ascent stage returned the astronauts to the command module. That said, I agree that the sites should be protected but I don't think vandals and looters are going to be much of a problem for MANY decades.
And what about the Lunar Spotted Owls... we have to do everything possible to preserver them too. We should start putting lunar spikes in the lunar forest trees to stop the lunar clear cutting. On second thought... why don't we put a clear plexi container around the entire moon and just fahgeddaboudit.
We need to preserve as many of their footprints as possible. Those are pretty important too.
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
Some rough estimates and finger counting calculations:
If 10 lunar sites were set aside, the surface area protected would be 100000 mi^2
The moon has 10 times the surface area of the US, so consider it as 10000 mi^2 of US land set aside.
The US National Park Service holdings total 10 times that. Just the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Death Valley total just a bit more than the 10000 mi^2
The amount suggested to be protected is not excessive. The distance is. There's no reason craft can't land or crawl closer.
A better suggestion might be to set a smaller radius for powered travel that would protect the areas from dust being blasted over the artifacts. Say 10 miles for landers and 1 for crawlers. Landers could overfly on a slow ballistic trajectory without firing, allowing overhead viewing. Crawlers could get close enough for people to walk up to fencing protecting the sites and the exact areas determined to have markings or artifacts of interest.
The time is now to set up a Lunar Park Service, determine the sites and boundaries, and send up the park rangers to put up the fencing.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
. . . so since the Loony Lunar Landings were filmed at Area 51, these private organizations should construct Area 51 robotic rovers, with matching Area 51 express rockets.
This will be less of a technological challenge, since the rockets will not have to leave Earth's orbit. However, this will be more of a tactical challenge, since the onery folks on Groom Lake aren't fond of little robotic varmints snooping around on their property. And they tend to get a bit jittery when they spy incoming rockets aimed at them.
I would suggest pinning a note on the rover stating: "Pay no attention to me! I am just here looking for Neil Armstrong's bootprint!"
It's about tourists in a future a thousand years from now.
Tourists, and restoration sticklers...
SIGLOST && SIGUNUSED && SIGQUIT
This whole stupid idea was in an LA paper and written by a graduate student who has done 'research on cultural heritage in space'. What a load of crap.
The US Government retains ownership of anything they sent to the moon so if someone did make the trip and suddenly there were a bunch of Apollo items up for sale I think we all know what would happen.
The Apollo 11 landing site is an important historical landmark. There's no question about that. Until it can be properly protected, if it should be properly protected, then I agree with a number of posters who think it should be left alone. And when I say left alone I mean 'do not approach within X meters' so that the site is reasonably uncontaminated. That's just good sense.
I'm simply appalled that some crap-ass ideas of a graduate student are getting this much attention. If NASA, Neil, or any of that crew were making the statements then I might have a different opinion but for now this chick either needs to get her head back into the books and keep it there where she can't bother us or get some actual credentials so she has something to back up her 'concerns'.
Or Richard Garriot is goign to be mad (and/or send an army of lawyers after you).
What, I'm the 1st to think of demanding a ransom for *not* wiping out the footprints?
Dave
In addition to the actual sites where the LMs set down, most Apollo missions created at least 2 OTHER "human influence sites" on the lunar surface.
The 3rd stage of the Saturn V rocket (S-IVB) was used to accomplish the translunar injection burn, and kept on heading to the moon after the LM/CSM separated from it. It was maneuvered onto a slightly different trajectory, and deliberately crashed into the moon in an experiment to test the seismographs left on previous missions.
And after the surface crew was safely back aboard the CSM in lunar orbit, the spent ascent stage of the LM was jettisoned, with it's orbit slowly decaying to an eventual crash into the lunar surface.
We don't even know where all these impact sites ARE, so forget trying to keep people 100 km away from them...
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
There's no reason to leave the moons surface littered with
historic space junk. Those sites could well be surveyed
from orbit and then cleaned up.
People would get more out of that stuff if it went into
a big museum on the moon.
With all the stuff in space crashing into the moon is the boot print still there?
as it is eaten so it shall pass
How will they prove/disprove by disinterested parties an actual landing?
haha
As pointed out earlier the first foot print was probably obliterated by both Aldrin, and Armstrong.
Why don't we ask the lunar astronauts what they think, I bet they would prefer science trumps some treasure hunter.
Besides I think up close inspections of the Lander bits, and especially the rovers would provide valuable insights into building vehicles that can withstand years, or decades on the moon, and still be useful.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
In the same way that the question "What did I hear you say?" is absurd (How can anyone know what I hear?), so too is the notion of protecting Neil Armstrong's boot print and the rest of the Apollo landing sites. If no one can explore them, of what use is it to protect them for historical or scientific purposes.
a slice of a larger philosophy that we should preserve all space bodies from human "contamination". There are a lot of environmentalists that argue that the moon and other bodies should be off-limits to human activities because we will wreck them like we did the Earth. I'm assuming this professor sees his position as a "compromise" between the two options.
I suspect the original footprints are still there (Neal was very careful about such things), but we'd have to ask him. So, I'd vote for a 50' or so cushion space for future tourists and archaeologists to enjoy. It's about time we went back to the moon anyway. Otherwise, there are a billion things more important to worry about.
Send a large collection rocket, collect all the 'historic' equipment and move on. Jeez you don't see a cordoned off area at a beach somewhere with a plaque proclaiming "Spot where amphibians first stepped on land." Trust me, the phrase "I'm stepping on the moon." will get old after about the one millionth time. (well assuming we don't have Bush III, in which case the above phrase may be in another language)
I'd be in favor of protecting the sites, but not as a means of protecting the evidences and artifacts of the earlier activities of themselves. I believe the real opportunity here would be to inspect and test the area to see if any measurable amounts of dust or other materials have settled on the previous tracks and artifacts. If properly measured, and since our last activity dates on the moon are known, it would provide a very interesting set of data regarding dust and sedimentary movement on the surface of the moon. With micro-gravity and (depending on your view) a trace atmosphere (one that does not well-protect against solar winds and magnetic influences), we could learn much more about the moon. Who knows? Maybe there are faint winds that were not measurable by then-contemporary measurement devices. Perhaps solar wind is able to affect particles on the surface. Our knowledge of the moon is still quite limited.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Did the Eagle LM do a sewage dump on the lunar surface before lift-off? If so, we should preserve the dump site. A frozen turd may hold up better than a footprint anyway.
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
With today's telescopes like the VLT with a resolution of around 1 milliarcsecond, equivalent to the distance between the headlights on a car at the distance of the Moon, wouldn't it be possible to take a picture of one of the numerous lander on the Moon ? Seems like they are slightly bigger than a car, so they would appear as 1 or 2 pixels on a shot taken from such a telescope...
And tranquility is not one of them. They nearly hit the boulders on the way down, and had real trouble finding a flat spot.
nec sorte nec fato
if such protection act gets enforced all the conspiracy theoretics are going to have a field day with it. for lots of people still need some actual proof that these landing did indeed happen. also wouldn't be surprising if one or two actually were filmed in desert, just to cut budget or fit in the schedule
I can understand preserving Armstrong's footprint. But if we don't get back in the business of going to the moon, then it's not going to do any good if no one can see it.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Seeing as no party independent of NASA has ever documented evidence of the Apollo moon landings (at least publicly), I see this as a simple ploy to continue this legacy.
But hey, I'm one of those whackos who doubts we actually walked on the moon and to me, this just adds weight to that possibility since it seems to be further obfuscation. /back to ATS I go!
OK, who watched this series...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvage_1
Basically, the only way to know for sure is go back and see. Unfortunately this may well result in discovering that the human races first footprint on the moon was perfectly preserved until we trashed it finding out if it was there.
We don't have any optical telescopes powerful enough to just look at the landing site with enough resolution to be meaningful so the only way to see if the footprint is still there is go land and look. If we do that, it would be quite possible to destroy it in the process. If we cannot verify that it is still there, we have no way of knowing if we should prohibit people from going there to preserve it.
Gentlemen, Schrodinger's cat has left the box, and is currently living on the moon.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The most assured way to maintain the cover-up, that the moon landings were fake, is to prohibit anyone from approaching the original sites!
And the Soviets don't care about the Apollo sites.
Several of the moon missions left corner reflector arrays for laser ranging. Seems to me that this is pretty good proof that something landed on the moon between 1969-72.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
You know... feigning utter and complete ignorance for comedic effect. Adding a level or two of broken logic for good measure.
Like that shit the clowns do when they dress up in baggy clothes and huge shoes and then try to do stuff like trying to jump over their own shadow?
No one can possibly be that retarded and still manage to post on Slashdot.
Ah don' kno'... I've seen some pretty retarded AC posts in my time...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
that he who litters first, litters last.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
What a load of rubbish. What, we are going to start worshipping the boot print now. Get over it! Progress is always being halted by sentiment and environmentalism. If I had the money I would offer 10x as much to land something right on the boot print!
I'm 75% sure that we didn't although all my life I made fund of people who expressed that idea.